I Was Looking The Other Way When Death Surprised Me

— I didn’t see him coming.

By Christine Schoenwald

I’d heard about Pattie before I’d ever met hershe was a psychic.

My friend Lissa had done a one-woman show and had talked about her psychic. Since Lissa was the owner of a theater, soon, everyone was going to see Pattie, who wasn’t only a psychic but an empath.

I had to check out Pattie’s skills for myself and made an appointment. Pattie lived in the same town as me but on a cul de sac further up in the hills. It was remote enough that deer came into her garden and ate her flowers, but not so far that she didn’t get trick-or-treaters.

Walking into Pattie’s house as she requested, I felt strange, and I always knocked and called out when I entered. She usually had four or five cats sleeping in boxes scattered throughout her living room.

Pattie was seated at a table in a little room with a cat in her lap and a tumbler full of iced tea at her side. She was a large woman with vivid blue eyes and a warm smile.

She enjoyed her work and loved people, and she didn’t fear the spirit world as she often communicated with them.

My mother has been dying for months; I have a cat with a brain tumor and another cat who is getting up there in years. When any of them die, it won’t be a surprise. I’ll be as ready as one can be.

What I wasn’t ready for was the death of someone outside of those three.

But Death is a trickster and hates to be predictable. He refuses to operate on anyone else’s timetable and does what he pleases.

I found out as I was waiting for my mother to die that Death came along and took my friend, Pattie, to the hereafter.

When I heard from a mutual friend that Pattie was in the hospital — it didn’t sound especially serious.

She was in her seventies, had Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and had some health issues this past year, but Pattie was also the most positive person I know, and she was resilient. She’d gone into the hospital on a Thursday, and I fully expected her to be out by Monday, laughing about the experience.

After my initial consultation, I saw Pattie regularly for a few years.

I’d crack the both of us up with my opening questions, “What do you hear?”

What were the spirits telling her that I needed to know?

Besides her psychic abilities, Pattie could read people, and much of the time, it felt like she was reading me more than she was getting info from the great beyond.

I also encouraged her to use the tarot cards with me as I felt the cards gave structure to our sessions and gave the proceedings a gravitas. The tarot cards made me feel she was being guided, not making things up on the spot.

Eventually, I couldn’t rationalize paying a bunch of money to an unlicensed therapist, but we stayed friends.

We went to a couple of dinner theater productions, and out to eat (which was challenging after she had weight-loss surgery,) talked on the phone, and sent texts and cards.

She was immensely proud and supportive of my writing, and I shared my favorite stories with her. She was one of my supplemental mothers who loved me unconditionally and always remembered my birthday.

I said before that she was an upbeat person — someone who made the best out of a tough situation.

One time, Pattie fell down the escalator at Target. Rather than being embarrassed, she befriended the paramedics, asking their names, finding out their stories, and making them laugh as they loaded her onto a stretcher and into the ambulance.

I thought this time in the hospital would be another event, but it turned into a funny anecdote about how Pattie had charmed even the snottiest surgeon or caused all the nurses to fall in love with her.

“I don’t know if this is the right thing to do or say,” my friend Poppy said, “but Pattie is dead. She died in her sleep.”

Yes, Pattie died how I wanted my mother to go — peacefully and in her sleep.

Death had gotten his wires crossed, or maybe it was deliberate on his part.

Why now?

Pattie loved Christmas and would often decorate her house to maximum Christmasness. I sent her a Christmas card last week and wished her a happy and healthy New Year.

I’m not ready to mourn her — my grief has already been parceled out. I’m at full capacity, and yet, I do grieve because not grieving is the same as not being grateful for knowing her and having someone as kind and good as she was in my life.

How often have Lissa, Poppy, and I discussed arranging a group lunch date with Pattie? We always put it off for when we weren’t so busy or for other silly reasons.

We thought there’d be plenty of time to get together — we didn’t know Death was lurking nearby.

Pattie may be gone, but I’m not ready to say goodbye.

Complete Article HERE!

Aging for Two

— How a longtime husband copes with his changing appearance. Humor helps.

Vincent O’Keefe

By Vincent O’Keefe

“Are you the father of the deceased?”

This jarring question came from a woman I did not know at a relative’s memorial service a couple years ago. The reason it was jarring? The deceased had died at age 59, and at that time I was 52. Plus, I was with my two daughters, ages 18 and 21, who couldn’t resist a chuckle as I pointed to the 86-year-old father of the deceased and said: “No, that’s him over there.”

That was the first (and so far, the only) time I have been mistaken for an 86-year-old. But it was the latest incident in my complicated, triangular relationship with my chronological age (how old I am), my “subjective” age (how old I feel) and what I call my “apparent” age (how old I look).

I have always looked older than my age, which was a benefit back in high school when I grew a mustache and beard by tenth grade.

I have always looked older than my age, which was a benefit back in high school when I grew a mustache and beard by tenth grade. As a teenage boy, looking older creates mystique and prompts awe-stricken fellow students to ask if you can buy them beer.

The flip side, however, was my early signs of balding. As a baseball teammate exclaimed one day, “Dude, you’re going to have a widow’s peak!” I didn’t know what that meant, but it did not sound good.

By the end of high school (and the beginning of my hairline’s retreat), I decided to embrace my “inner balding man” and go for laughs, in part because he’s always visible on the outside anyway. My first performance of this approach occurred in my early 20s during my toast at my older brother Mark’s wedding.

After informing the crowd that I was Mark’s older brother, I mentioned that I used to be his younger brother. Then I recounted our recent trip to a bar where my four-years-older-than-me brother had to show his I.D. while I did not, which “proved” that my age had bypassed his age.

My 20s also featured meeting and eventually marrying my beautiful wife, Michele, who is two years younger than me and has always had a “baby face.” We have been together for 34 years, and thanks to genetics, rigorous self-care and regular moisturizing, she still looks much younger than her age (more on that soon).

The Hits Kept Coming

When I was 28 and took her to my 10-year high school reunion, I was embarrassed for her to hear a former classmate who was gobsmacked by my hairline state: “Vince, you look so … old.” All I could think to say was “thanks, it’s nice to see you too!”

“My dad doesn’t need many haircuts because he only has half-hair!”

In my 30s, the hits kept coming. Michele and I now had two young daughters, and one day the five-year-old boy who lived next door was playing with our older daughter, Lauren. When the kids were on our backyard swings, the boy pointed at me and said: “Hey, maybe your grandpa can push us!” For a moment, I thought my father or father-in-law had shown up behind me.

This embarrassing incident was followed by six-year-old Lauren making me squirm at a salon. During one of her chatty haircuts, she was telling the stylist about the hairdos of her mother and sister. Then she pointed at me and announced to a crowd: “My dad doesn’t need many haircuts because he only has half-hair!”

In my early 40s, as I continued to age and Michele continued to moisturize, the inevitable happened: my wife was mistaken for one of my children. At a science center, our family of what I saw as obviously two adults and two children approached the ticket window. The woman glanced at us and said to me: “One adult and three kids?” Michele shot me a sympathetic smile but also got a laugh out of that one.

Our Aging Discrepancies

Laughter, indeed, has been a way for Michele and me to bond over our aging discrepancies. At one of our recent wedding anniversary dinners, I gave Michele a bonus present right before dinner. The gift? Admitting that after I dropped her off, parked the car, and entered the restaurant, the host said to me: “Let me show you to your daughter’s table.”

Better coping mechanisms have been humor and an appreciation of my health, which continues to be good thanks in part to regular exercise.

Now in my 50s, I have learned to accept the things I cannot change about my appearance. There were times when I considered Rogaine or a hairpiece, but those didn’t feel right for me. Better coping mechanisms have been humor and an appreciation of my health, which continues to be good thanks in part to regular exercise.

Another coping strategy has been to reframe my aging conundrum into sunnier terms. Rather than lament that I’m in my 50s but appear to be in my 80s, I take pride in how spry I must look to strangers whenever I do yardwork, lift something heavy, or just move quickly. I imagine their low expectations leading to thoughts like “that 80-year-old moves like a 50-year-old!”

People sometimes describe pregnant women as “eating for two,” though my baby-faced wife never liked that phrase during her pregnancies years ago. But it seems that during our long relationship I have been taking the burden of aging off her plate, so to speak, by “aging for two.”

Granted, there are far more cultural pressures placed on women than on men when it comes to aging gracefully. And the unfair social penalties for women in their 50s who may look older than their chronological age are nothing to laugh about.

Still, my wife and I continue to enjoy the absurdities of (mostly my) aging. At a recent wake, a relative who had not seen me in many years actually asked Michele out of my earshot: “Where is your husband?” When Michele pointed at me, the woman asked as if seeing a ghost: “That’s Vince?!” Clearly, I had become unrecognizable — you might even say “deceased” — to the woman.

At least I wasn’t mistaken for the ghost’s father.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

‘The Good Death’: Communications Expert Approaches End-of-Life Discussions With Humor

— Communications Expert Approaches End-of-Life Discussions With Humor

Sitting neatly on Christian Seiter’s desk is a pair of salt and pepper shakers shaped like gravestones, each one with its own inscription: “Here lies salt” and “Here lies pepper.” 

Surrounded by death-inspired trinkets and memorabilia, the assistant professor of human communications at Cal State Fullerton calls himself a “death positive scholar” interested in studying end-of-life communication. His research analyzes how different emotions — such as worry and humor — impact people’s willingness to confront their mortality.

By understanding the power of these communication strategies, Seiter’s goal is to encourage people to talk about death and help them work toward what he calls “the good death.”

“Death comes for us all, as harrowing as that can be. Pretending that it’s not going to happen isn’t going to help anybody. In fact, failing to prepare could make the worst day of your loved one’s life unnecessarily worse,” said Seiter. “When time is running short, the gifts that we give are almost all communication-based — things like communicating clearly about what wishes you would want.”

Using Humor to Face Mortality

According to Seiter, planning for a person’s death includes three main steps: reflecting on one’s values and beliefs about the end-of-life, sharing those wishes with loved ones through conversation and formalizing those wishes with documentation, such as advance directives.

Advance care directives include living wills which outline a person’s decisions for medical treatment if they are no longer able to express informed consent, and designating a health care proxy to make medical decisions if a person is unable.

For many, especially young and healthy people, these steps can seem unnecessary or premature, but Seiter said that preparing for the end of someone’s life is similar to packing a spare tire before a long road trip. It’s better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

“It’s pretty easy to convince someone who is elderly or someone who’s very ill that this is relevant, but it’s a lot harder to convince college students that they’re not immortal,” he said.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Seiter said that death anxiety has significantly increased. He explained that the constant reminder of death has deterred people from seeking information about end-of-life care.

In a study he conducted in 2020, Seiter found that worry can be used as a mechanism to influence people to take an active role in planning for the end of their life, but in response to the pandemic and high levels of demotivation, he’s interested in another approach to discussing death — humor.

“Humor has the ability to make conversations about death more accessible for everybody,” said Seiter. 

Christian Seiter
Christian Seiter, assistant professor of human communications

This semester, he is working on a research project that evaluates how different levels of humor in a podcast impact listeners’ ability to talk about death and seek out end-of-life precautions. In three podcasts, the speakers talk about advance care planning, but aside from a control episode, one episode adds humor and the third includes humor with profanity.

He is still analyzing the data, but historically, profanity in the death positive movement has been a popular method of encouraging young people to engage with such topics as last wishes and advance care.

Despite Seiter’s best intentions, he knows that there are a lot of reasons why people postpone thinking about their death. For some people, it’s fear that talking about it will invite death into their lives.

No matter the reason, Seiter said it’s important to think about the bigger picture and the additional heartbreak that loved ones could be spared if these conversations occur before it’s too late.

“I’m always amazed by the stories that I hear of people talking about how some of the best days of their lives were some of the last days of their lives because they don’t have to worry about the next steps. Everything is already in place, and they can focus on saying goodbye and leaving with peace,” said Seiter. “Clarity is maybe the greatest gift you could give your loved ones.”

Not everyone is as fascinated with death as Seiter, but there are ways that they can begin to have these conversations in informal and low-risk settings. He said that the first step is to start thinking about one’s mortality and deciding who they would trust to act on their behalf. After discussing those answers with loved ones, people can fill out an advance care directive online without the help of a lawyer.

“I think it’s important for us to step into places of constructive discomfort,” he said. “I’m a big proponent of approaching it with healthy curiosity. If you are curious about it, don’t stifle that. Don’t let societal taboos or myths stop you, and don’t judge yourself for being curious.”

Becoming Death Positive

Seiter found his niche in end-of-life communication as an actor studying medical humanities and bioethics at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. His original goal was to design a theater-based workshop that taught participants clinical empathy. During his program, his adviser sent him to the palliative care unit, and the experience altered his perception of death permanently.

“When I stepped into the very first patient room, I almost fainted and I had to excuse myself. It’s not something that came easily,” said Seiter. “After I composed myself and received a pep talk from my mentor, I reframed the experience and was able to have some of the most meaningful weeks of my life. That’s where I fell in love with the idea of ‘the good death.’”

From that moment on, he shifted his interest away from theater and began his career in academia, conducting research and engaging students with this topic of death.

He brings his expertise into the classroom at CSUF, teaching classes on health communication, processes of social influence and persuasion as well as interpersonal communication and research methods.

“Many people don’t want to admit that we are all a little curious about this, and yet, you would never know because nobody wants to talk about it,” said Seiter. “Especially with COVID-19, we’ve all been living with death very intimately for several years and giving people an avenue to talk about it is a really valuable thing.”

Complete Article HERE!

The best medicine?

Humour can be a double-edged part of grieving

For people who have recently lost a loved one, humour can trigger episodes of intense grief–but it can also help in the recovery process, according to a new study.

A University of Alberta study uncovers an often-overlooked trigger for both grief and healing in people coping with the loss of a loved one.

By Gillian Rutherford

When Donna Wilson pulled up to visit her aunt and uncle on their farm near Eatonia, Sask., a few years ago, she came across a comical scene: Her uncle Doug was running around the yard chasing turkeys. The birds kept jumping up on his dog and he was trying to shoo them away with a broom.

It’s a memory Wilson plans to remind her aunt Doreen of soon. Doug died over the winter, and her aunt is grieving. Wilson hopes that sharing a funny story about him will help them both.

“I loved my uncle Doug, and I remember he was always smiling and laughing about something,” said Wilson. “Hopefully we will laugh together and it will be healing.”

Wilson, a nursing professor at the University of Alberta, recently published study findings that show humour can trigger moments of intense grief for people who have recently lost a loved one, but humour can also be helpful in the recovery process.

The key–as always with humour–is timing, plus you’ve got to know your audience, says Wilson.

The study was part of a larger inquiry into grief triggers–thoughts, memories, or events like anniversaries and family gatherings, special places, songs, even jokes. Very little research has been done on triggers and how bereaved people manage them, Wilson says, but they can be incapacitating.

“You can be driving past the hospital where your husband died, and suddenly have a massive grief trigger and have to pull over,” she said. “Now think about if that’s a pilot who’s flying a plane, or a surgeon, or a truck driver going down the highway.”

Working through the stages of grief

Researchers report there are nearly 300,000 deaths each year in Canada and on average 10 people grieve each death. For the study, Wilson and her team did in-depth interviews with 10 middle-aged and older Canadians who had lost a parent, child, sibling or spouse within the past two years, asking about their experiences with grief and recovery.

They all described being completely overwhelmed by grief at first, then being frequently hit by “hard-grief” triggers. Most found a way to reshape their lives without the loved one after about a year, and over the next year they were able to welcome good memories of the deceased person without triggered episodes of crying or extreme sadness. Eight of the 10 interview subjects said humour helped with their recovery.

“I think nobody realized humour is present for our mental health, even in grief,” said Begoña Errasti-Ibarrondo, associate professor with the University of Navarra and a visiting academic at the U of A. “In Spain, for example, at funerals sometimes we make jokes if it is appropriate and we tell funny stories about the person or the tricks they used to play.”

“Humour is what made it possible for me to live,” said one interview subject quoted in the paper. “I looked forward to the times I could laugh or smile; I could get a break from my grief.”

Researchers say when you are supporting someone who is grieving it is important to talk to them about the person who died. However, they caution it’s best to check first with the bereaved person before turning to humour, as some may not be ready or may find it inappropriate.

“Grief is very personal and so is humour,” said Errasti-Ibarrondo.

The saying “laughter is the best medicine” dates back to the King James Bible, originally published in 1611. We now know laughter releases endorphins and positive hormones that contribute to physical and mental health.

For her part, Wilson will continue to remember how her uncle Doug liked to use humour to cope with the frustrations of daily life. Once he was planning to take his family out for a drive when he noticed one of his car tires was deflated. “Well, at least it’s only flat on one side,” he told them with a laugh.

Complete Article HERE!

How ‘I’m Dead’ Became a Good Thing

Dying of laughter is an exaggeration, but something about it has rung true over the centuries.

By Caleb Madison

On a literal level, it should be impossible to make sense of someone saying “I’m dead” unless you’re attending a successful séance. Yet here we are in 2022, not only proclaiming our own expiration but reveling in it. Far from speech beyond the grave, “I’m dead” has come to communicate one of the highest pleasures of life: the giddy throes of uncontrollable laughter. When someone says “I’m dead” or even just “dead” in 2022, they’re telling you that they couldn’t be more tickled by what just happened. So how did being dead become a good thing?

Death and laughter have been strange bedfellows since ancient Greece, where, legend has it, the fifth-century-B.C. painter Zeuxis died from laughing at the portrait he was painting of a supposedly ugly old woman—a hilarious anecdote later immortalized in an equally hilarious painting by the Dutch master Arent De Gelder. And Zeuxis’s isn’t the only classically depicted death by laughter. The Stoic philosopher Chrysippus, by several accounts, kicked the bucket because he couldn’t stop laughing after witnessing a donkey eating his figs. Bizarrely, King Martin I of Aragon is said to have died laughing at a joke also concerning an animal eating figs. Legends of giggly demises litter history; as recently as 1989, a Danish audiologist is said to have passed away guffawing during a screening of A Fish Called Wanda. Apparently, the best medicine is also sometimes the sweetest poison. Although I admit it would be a great way to go, I myself will be avoiding all zoo-adjacent fig farms in the near future out of an abundance of caution.

The connection between death and laughter was consummated in English by—who else?—Shakespeare. In his comedy The Taming of the Shrew, after the exit of the vivacious and eccentric couple Petruchio and Katharine, Petruchio’s servant, Grumio, says, “Went they not quickly, I should die with laughing.” From then on, the phrase to die laughing was part of the language as a hyperbolic idiom—we all know it’s an exaggeration, but something within the fiction rings true to our relationship with laughter and death. The fatal violence of hilarity proliferated in English over the following centuries. From the 1930s slang to bust a gut to the idea of being “in stitches” to the ironic Catcher in the Rye Holden Caulfield–ism “That killed me,” there’s something about the experience of uncontrollable laughing that seems to put us into close contact with our inevitable nonexistence.

And it makes sense. Intense laughter expresses itself in violent convulsions and temporary loss of bodily control. Who among us hasn’t been part of a tickle-fest that verged on sadomasochistic brutality? Times when I laugh so hard that I cry can feel like an out-of-body experience—a sublime mania that temporarily relieves me of the burden of consciousness. Perhaps we say “I’m dead” because we’ve intuited that deep and frenzied laughter gives us a taste of the eternal unknown toward which we’re all always hurdling. This sense of comatose comicality yielded our Friday-level clue “That’s so funny I can’t even function.”

Complete Article HERE!

Death Is No Laughing Matter.

But on DeathTok It Is.

Americans struggle with talking about death. To remedy that, some hospice nurses have taken to TikTok to soothe people’s qualms with macabre humor.

An unlikely group of influencers on TikTok is using cheeky skits and viral songs to change our relationship to mortality.

By Jessica Lucas

Casual TikTok viewers might think of the app as just a feed of Gen Zers doing viral dances and lip-synch reenactments. But the social network has also provided a space for some unlikely influencers: hospice workers, morticians, and funeral directors. These content creators hope that their comedic takes on mortality will help people who find death hard to discuss, especially during the pandemic, in which more than 900,000 Americans have died. DeathTok, as it’s called, is a corner of the platform where skits about end-of-life care, funeral arrangements, and death-worker mishaps bring comfort to those suffering through grief and loss, and clarity to those who are curious about an oft-avoided topic.

Our inability to plainly discuss death and its circumstances stems, in part, from the American ethos of self-reliance, according to Cole Imperi, a well-known author and speaker on the subject of death and thanatology. “We value the story of somebody coming to the U.S with $5 in their pocket and they make it … needing nobody,” she told me over Zoom. The end of life, Imperi explained, sits in direct opposition to this philosophy: As people age and approach death, they rely on others for help. The fear of lost autonomy (be it one’s own or a relative’s) makes planning for, grieving, and processing death hard for many Americans. “We don’t have a lot of practice with knowing how to talk about something that’s painful, scary, or difficult all the way through,” Imperi said. She believes that the humor DeathTok offers can be a useful tool for pushing through this discomfort. “Having humor is critically important when it comes to death and dying,” she said. “Humor is necessary. Humor helps us heal.”

Although some find death-based comedy unpalatable, many TikTok viewers agree with Imperi’s estimation that the levity of a well-placed joke can sometimes make difficult situations easier. When I spoke with Penny Hawkins, a 59-year-old hospice quality-control manager from Washington, she explained how she uses comedy to educate others. “If you’re talking about a really heavy subject like death and you’re able to put kind of a funny spin on it, it makes it a little more palatable. It’s not quite so scary,” said Hawkins, who has more than 300,000 followers on her nurse_penny TikTok account. She encourages viewers to be curious about human anatomy by explaining what happens to failing bodies. For example, to tackle the misconception that hospice patients need to stay hydrated, Hawkins danced to the viral song “Just Water,” by the TikTokers Bryansanon and Tisakorean. To caption her video, she wrote: “If your dying person isn’t taking fluids, that’s ok. Their body is shutting down and doesn’t need it.” The chorus, which repeats the line “It’s just water!,” serves as a whimsical background to Hawkins’s blunt explanation.

Three scrolling tik tok feeds with a hospital gurney and ekg machine in background.

Hawkins has also used macabre comedy to illuminate the realities of hospice care. In one video, about the use of morphine at the end of life, an exasperated Hawkins appeals to the camera and feigns anger at a family who wants to withhold morphine from a dying loved one out of fear that they’ll become addicted. “They’re suffering and they’re dying,” Hawkins’s caption reads. “Addiction is the least of their worries.” Hawkins told me hospice patients aren’t typically at risk of developing an addiction, because many of them are not in end-of-life care long enough to become addicted (for instance, the median length of stay for Medicare recipients in hospice is about 18 days). As uncomfortable and dark as the video may be, it underscores Hawkins’s overall message that learning more about dying bodies and end-of-life care can only help.

Beyond the medical aspects of death and dying, some videos also warn people about one of the largest hurdles after a loved one’s passing: logistics. Lauren Taylor, a 28-year-old former funeral director who lives in Florida, shares farcical family stories on TikTok—such as a quarrel between a mistress and a wife over the burial of a shared lover—to make the point that planning is key. “Being preplanned, having everything written down ahead of time, and letting others know what your wishes are is so important,” she told me over the phone. Taylor, who asked to use her maiden name to protect her family’s privacy, has more than 400,000 followers on her account, @lovee.miss.lauren, and said she has witnessed how traumatic unplanned funerals can be for families and wants to inspire forethought. “These comedic situations where you kind of wonder, Is this real? It happens more often than people think,” she said. “It can be comical to talk about after the fact, but when you’re living in the moment, it’s the most stressful thing ever.”

While DeathTok has been a useful tool for families navigating their relatives’ mortality, it’s also helped death workers themselves cope with the demands of their job. Julie McFadden, a 39-year-old hospice nurse in California, told me that of her close-to-700,000 followers, her fellow medics are the loudest voices in her comments section. “Any of my videos that are more dark, that could be slightly offensive to some, I’m always 100 percent supported by nurses,” she said. In one video, she recounts the time she noticed that a patient was dead even though the rest of their family did not (set to the audio of a person screaming “Don’t worry!” in a panicked tone). The clip spurred other nurses to share similar stories, and one thanked her for her “positive outlook” on such difficult situations. McFadden told me that though nurses are taught how to care for and save patients, many aren’t coached on how to handle death psychologically. “As a community, it’s nice to come together and make light of the things we know are messed up,” she said. “What else are we going to do if we don’t laugh about it?”

When death workers make these short, funny videos, they provide more than just comfort to their colleagues or the bereaved. Their TikToks can be soothing even for patients dealing with a terminal diagnosis. Val Currie, a 32-year-old undergoing treatment for Stage 3 recurrent metastatic cancer, told me that DeathTok provides a much-needed release, and has helped her have discussions with her partner about end-of-life care. “I’m learning to laugh at the process,” she said. If viewers can laugh at death, then they can talk about it. And if they can talk about it, healing may not be too far behind.

Complete Article HERE!

A Comedy About Death

– KnifeRock’s ‘Moon Manor’ Official Trailer

by

“If I can’t be me – and I mean everything that that means – I just don’t want to be.” Good Deed Ent. has revealed an official trailer for Moon Manor, a “comedy about death” made by the filmmaking duo known as “KnifeRock” (Erin Granat & Elizabeth Brissenden). This first premiered last year at a festival, and will be dropping on VOD starting in March to watch. Today is Jimmy’s last day alive. His Alzheimer’s is worsening, so he’s decided to die like he has lived – with intention, humor, and zest. In his last day on Earth, Jimmy will show an obituary writer, his death doula, his estranged brother, his caretaker, a surreal being, and guests at his fabulous “FUN-eral”, that perhaps the art of living is the art of dying. It’s “inspired by a true-ish story.” The film also marks the first original score by Coldplay producers The Dream Team. Moon Manor stars Jim Carrozo as Jimmy, with Debra Wilson, Richard Riehle, Lou Taylor Pucci, Reshma Gajjar, Galen Howard, Ricki Lake, and Heather Morris. Looks so wacky and fun and clever and fresh! I dig it.

Sometimes learning how to live, is learning how to die. On his last day alive, Jimmy (Jim Carrozo) will show his estranged brother, a salt-of-the-earth caretaker, sharp-witted death doula, an obituary writer, a cosmic being, and the guests at his FUNeral that sometimes the art of living just may be the art of dying. An exploration of what it means to have a “good death” and inspired by the life stories of 84-year-old lead actor James Carrozo. Moon Manor is co-written and co-directed by filmmakers Erin Granat & Machete Bang Bang (aka Elizabeth Brissenden – director on the series “I.R.L.”), collectively known as “KnifeRock”, both making their feature directorial debut after a few short films previously. Produced by John Humber, Bay Dariz, Erin Granat & Machete Bang Bang. Featuring a score by Coldplay producers The Dream Team. This first premiered at the 2021 Atlanta Film & Video Festival last year. Good Deed will debut Moon Manor in select US theaters + on VOD starting March 11th, 2022 coming up soon. Drop by the film’s official site.

Complete Article HERE!